Cincinnati's 188 'World's Fair'

The Fourth of July marks the 130th anniversary of the city’s stunning Centennial Exposition

They called it the “World’s Fair of Cincinnati.” When the Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States first began to enthrall onlookers 130 years ago, way back in 1888, it was nominally slated to celebrate the anniversary of the City of Cincinnati’s founding. More to the truth, this incredibly lavish year-long exposition gave cause to spotlight the growing metro’s industry, commerce and rampant technological progress.

Unheard-of electric lights were seen everywhere; exhibit halls could be open — and illuminated — late into the night. Gondolas were imported from Venice, Italy, along with the necessary gondoliers to provide voyages along the Erie Canal (what’s now Central Parkway). For laughs, they even hauled in President Ulysses S. Grant’s Point Pleasant home. Really.

The ostentatious festival dominated city life for most of the year in 1888: planning, execution, excitement, crowds, tear-downs. It ran for more than 100 days, from July 4 to Nov. 8, open 9 a.m.-10 p.m. every day except Sunday. Cincinnatians subscribed for tickets in excess of $1 million, a tidy sum in that era; season tickets cost a whopping $5, and adult daily admission was 25 cents.

Poster art from the official expo guide

This was Cincinnati in all its heady glory. The city was just beginning to enjoy the fresh trappings of civilization: The light bulb — unavailable for Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition in 1876 — had made its way west; amazing wax cylinders belted out Classical music favorites; and the first modern drinking straw appeared. The automobile had yet to arrive; the Kodak camera was just around the corner. Even some geek named Thomas Edison had just filed a patent for his “optical phonograph” (the very first movie).

Locally, E.W. Scripps had acquired the Penny Paper, changing its name to the Cincinnati Post. Barney Kroger had just painted his first storefront in fire-engine red. The first electric streetcar appeared in June 1888, on the Mount Adams-Eden Park line. And Cincinnatians were consuming 40 gallons of beer per capita annually (and distilling two million gallons of whiskey per year).

The Centennial Exposition, officially commemorating the settlement of the Ohio Valley, Northwest Territory, state of Ohio and city of Cincinnati, was created to attract tourists by providing entertainment while showcasing Cincinnati’s ingenuity with the newest machines being produced here and to demonstrate the progress the area had made in the past century.

All in all, the fest featured 47 acres of unbridled play and 950,000-square-feet of exhibition space.

The bridge connecting Music Hall and Park Hall // Photo: Cincinnati Historical Society

The expo commenced on the Fourth of July in 1888 with a grand parade and dedication. At noon, a brass gong sounded in Music Hall, indicating it was time to press the button to bring the driving engines of the expo to life — an honor given to “Miss Mary Allison, the little daughter of the President of the Board of Commissioners.” She pressed the button and electricity whizzed through the hall, illuminating a cadre of lights, much to the joy of spectators.

The lavish parade that followed, witnessed by a crowd of 500,000 people, wound its way through the streets of Cincinnati. “The crowded streets were gay with flags and bunting, and the houses in every part of the city were elaborately decorated,” boasts the Report of the Centennial Exposition. “While the history of local parades tells of many wonderful ones, they all pale before that of yesterday.”

There were whistles and bells and float after float of officials in fancy dress, pretty girls and local business. Moerlein Brewing Co. presented a large wagon, drawn by 12 horses, with ornamental beer kegs and the Queen of Beers waving from the top. A tobacco company float featured girls rolling cigars and throwing them into the crowd. There were also historical floats with representations of characters like Daniel Boone, fur trappers and more than a few offensive portrayals of American Indians.

At the expo itself, the center of activities revolved around the recently constructed Music Hall. It was completed in 1878 in part to house this and other expositions, along with choral festivals. The giant auditorium served as the anchor for the temporary buildings erected in and around Washington Park — Machinery Hall and Park Hall — to create the largest connected covered area ever used for an exposition on the continent.

Fair overview illustration // Photo: The Society for the Preservation of Music Hall

In a city known for its previous agricultural and mechanical expositions — we were nicknamed the “Mother of Expositions” at the time — Music Hall was transformed.

“Music Hall has never been decorated as it was for this Exposition,” wrote J.M. Blair, chairman of the expo’s special committee on buildings on lighting. “Maroon colored plush drapery hid the curving front of the balconies. From pillar to post in the balconies were strung long rows of incandescent electric lamps, enclosed in globes of red, white, blue, opal, amber, yellow and green.”

Chairs were removed and more than 2,500 yards of Brussels carpet was laid on the main floor, making it home to the largest carpet in America.

Along with the exhibits of more traditional goods and services, there was Music Hall’s auditorium, used for regular vocal and orchestral performances during the event, and Art Hall, with “the finest collection of paintings ever seen in this country,” according to the Official Guide of the Centennial Exhibition of the Ohio Valley and Central States.

An illustration of Horticulture Hall from the official expo guide

Music Hall was also home to Horticulture Hall, full of “nooks and grottoes, trellised walks, rare plants, (and) hanging fountains, all lit up with parti-colored electric lights.” In the grottoes, you could have ice cream or soda served to you by “young girls handsomely uniformed.” An iron rainbow adorned with different colored flashing and twinkling glass lights was set up above a waterfall “thirty feet in height, which was studded with 100 or more colored electric lamps, which glowed like a bed of electric fire among the rocks,” according to the Report.

Suspended glass orbs full of colored water cast a pale glow over the scene and wonders of artful illumination fascinated expo-goers, complete with gardens of electric flowers and ferns, automated horned owls with blinking eyes and hanging Japanese parasols with flashing lights that appeared to rotate.

Behind Music Hall, on Plum Street, was Machinery Hall, an exhibition space for the latest Industrial Revolution machines. 

Machinery Hall was a 1,300-foot-long building with twin towers constructed over the Miami-Erie Canal (where Central Parkway is today) from 12th to 15th streets. It was 150-feet wide in the center where it connected with Music Hall and the aisles on both sides of the canal, which ran down the center of the building, were devoted to machinery and factory technology exhibits; in fact, the several hundred exhibits produced the power necessary to light and operate the other exhibition halls.

The canal in Machinery Hall // Photo: Cincinnati Historical Society

A total of four incredibly ornate bridges crossed the canal — “not unlike those at Venice,” states the Report — and the building itself was three blocks long. The structure formed a domed roof, 40 feet above the water, and was illuminated at night by “innumerable jets of gas and electric lights,” according to its architect, Cincinnati’s James W. McLaughlin.

Daily performances were staged on ships on the covered waterway, as were canal races and gondola rides. Other major events included a typing contest, in what’s called the birthday of the “touch typing method”; Frank McGurrin from Salt Lake City won decisive victory over Louis Traub in a contest held here that momentous year.

According to the official expo report, “The scene in this building at night, with its brilliant light effects and decorations, its gorgeous pageants and gaily decorated gondolas reflected in the water, was quite bewildering and afforded no end of delight to visitors.”

The final building — Park Hall, the main expo building in Washington Park — was a two-story cruciform creation: 600-feet-by-110-feet one way and 400-feet-by-110-feet the other, with a giant dome and “a fine view of the city” from the upper balconies. It was connected to Music Hall by a covered bridge over Elm Street.

Park Hall housed restaurants and cafés, a hospital, a government display and minerals on loan from Ontario, Canada. Even the Smithsonian Institution contributed a pavilion to Park Hall, coordinating all of the U.S. government exhibits and preparing a display on its own activities and collections. For the “Section of Mammals,” the Smithsonian installed a 140-foot-long case showing the stuffed or skeletal remains of every mammal known to science. They even suspended a 45-foot-long Finback whale skeleton over the hall’s main aisle.

The North End of Machinery Hall // Photo: Cincinnati Historical Society

Along with gigantic Cetaceans, Park Hall boasted one of the largest fountains constructed in the country — 89 feet long and 68 feet wide with a jet that rose 65 feet in the air. Nicknamed the “Fairy Fountain,” when the orchestra in the gallery played Strauss waltzes, the fountain illuminated in time with the music and “giant Japanese fish filled with lamps looked like they were swimming into (it).” Down the hall was a rotating 40-foot-high Christmas tree that flashed the years “1788-1888” at the base.

Park Hall also had popcorn and candy stands, a thrilling 60-foot display of Singer Sewing machines, clothing and wares from Mabley & Carew department store, pianos, petrified wood, dental devices, billiards tables, furs, ladies shoes and a children’s department overseen by William Howard Taft’s mother. A “monster Edison lamp” on display was 30-feet high and made up of 15,000 individual electric lights.

Outside, according to the expo report, “The principal facades of the main buildings were also covered with highly wrought artistic and emblematic designs, and at the intersection of the principal street crossings, great triumphal arches were erected of gas pipe, studded with many colored globes. The scene at night under this bright array of color reminded one of the enchanted scenes in the Arabian nights.”

In the end, all this fanfare resulted in a total financial gain for the expo of $363.21 — about $9,000 today. It rained 49 out of the 110 days of the fest. And historians generally question its overall success — an industrial expo was never held in the city again.

Illustration of the fountain in Park Hall from the official expo guide

But locally, the pomp and circumstance helped prove Cincinnati’s place as a thriving metropolis. History records Washington Park in 1888 as the epicenter of the city’s cultural scene. Its two blocks of Over-the-Rhine were the pulsating heart of a city center buzzing with the energy of innovation and modernity, acknowledging the positive progress of the past and looking ahead to the expansive potential of the future in technology, architecture, design, the arts and industry. In that particular moment in the 19th century, the neighborhood must have felt exceptionally alive and of-the-moment. 

Cincinnati’s status as one of America’s leading boomtowns would gradually give way to other Midwestern cities and its cultural core became more scattered. But a 21st-century renaissance has brought a fresh, rejuvenated spirit back to downtown and Over-the-Rhine, which now bustles with more forward-thinking development. Among the creative-minded start-ups and arts-fueled attractions, one of the biggest moments of OTR’s resurrection was BLINK, the 2017 event that featured stunning, imaginative light projections on buildings throughout the city’s urban center and drew massive, record-setting crowds to the area. 

Leading-edge optimism and a dazzling light show? Perhaps it is just as the old idiom says: “What goes around comes around.” 

— BY MAIJA ZUMMO AND FELIX WINTERNITZ

Dispatches from the Expo

The Cincinnati Enquirer had a ball reporting on the gossipy, bizarre and incredibly non-PC daily happenings at the expo, which provided newspaper fodder from July through the beginning of November 1888.

July 18, 1888 / Big News: “Some of the pretty girls at the various exhibits will flirt.”

July 27, 1888 / Mr. Steer Goes For a Swim: “The usually placid waters of the canal were somewhat disturbed yesterday morning by the advent into the Centennial buildings of an unexpected visitor. A large steer which was being driven through the streets in the lower part of the city jumped into the canal, and being of a somewhat inquisitive turn of mind, swam toward the Exposition Building. His curiosity led him into the Machinery Hall and the gondoliers and people riding around in boats were very much astonished to see him. Mr. Steer didn’t seem at all excited or disturbed by the noise of the machinery or the peculiarity of his surroundings. Commodore Schmidt, of the gondola fleet, happened to see the entrance of the inquisitive animal, which was evidently preparing to have a good time since he had escaped from the clutches of those who were conducting him to the butcher shop.”

July 7, 1888 / Beer Drama: “An incipient row was kicked up because the lemonade people sold beer, and vice versa.”

Aug. 1, 1888 / Pole Dance: “In honor of Brewer’s Day, Commodore Schmidt will give an exciting race on the canal and in addition there will be a greased pole-climbing contest. The contests who (can’t) climb the pole, will fall into the canal.”

Sept. 26, 1888 / Getting Lucky: “Pretty Kentucky girls were abundant yesterday.”

Oct. 3, 1888 / Nope: “Ahwanetunk’s tribe of tame Indians gave performances in Music Hall yesterday. When you civilize an Indian you take all the Indian out of him.”

July 6, 1888 / Gum Theft: “Scattered through the building are hundreds of little boxes containing chewing gum. The visitor is invited to drop a nickel in the slot, pull out a little drawer, and help himself to a piece of gum which drops into the box. It was discovered yesterday that some unknown parties have been robbing the boxes of gum in an ingenious manner. They have made pieces of lead the same size, weight and shape as a nickel.”

Oct. 21, 1888 / The Danger of Being a Barber: “An amusing sequel to the Barbers’ Day celebration at the Centennial has just leaked out. Jake Rudolf, a tonsorial artist whose place of business is opposite the St. Clair Hotel on Sixth Street, was the victim of a rather ghastly practical joke. Jake is a jolly barber with lots of friends, and he told all his customers what a good time he intended to have on Barbers’ Day. He was one of the leading spirits of the occasion and did the Exposition for all it was worth. William Lawson, son of F.H. Lawson of West Sixth Street, is one of Rudolf’s customers. He knew all about the shop being closed and he determined to have some fun at his barber’s expense. When Jake and his men left the shop, Lawson produced a liberal supply of black crepe and just as the shades of night were falling, he tied it on the knob of the shop door. Pasted on the window in explanation of the crepe were the mournful words: ‘Closed on account of the sudden death of the proprietor, Jake Rudolf.’ Hundreds of people on their way home from work stopped and read the inscription. Some of the barber’s friends were astounded at the news. Not realizing that the skillful hand of a practical joker had been at work. The prospective Mrs. Rudolf…almost went into hysterics.”

Aug. 5, 1888 / You Might Be a Redneck… : “A country visitor sat in one of the front seats in Music Hall yesterday in his stocking feet. He said his shoes hurt him.”

July 19, 1888 / Infant Banditti: “The arrest by Officer William Carey of three little ragamuffins at the Centennial Exposition Buildings yesterday morning was the means of giving the police authorities the long-sought for information regarding the persons who have been keeping the people in the West End in constant dread of being robbed. The oldest of the lads was but eleven years of age, but in point of smartness they are equal to almost any thirty-year-old crook.”

July 22, 1888 / A Centennial Babe: “There was a sensation at the Centennial last night which very few people heard about. A baby was born in Music Hall about seven o’clock. …The lady was not expecting to be confined for another month, but the doctor said the boy is a strong, healthy fellow. Several of the Commissioners have suggested the idea that the infant be called James Allison Crawford, in honor of the president of the Centennial.”

Aug. 4, 1888 / Disappearing Wife: “An old farmer was very much distressed yesterday because he had lost his wife somewhere in the building. Several cases of the same character have occurred since the Centennial opened.”

Aug. 5, 1888 / Heat Wave: “It was not as hot in the buildings as on the street.”

Sept. 1, 1888 / Little Invalids: “More than twenty of the little invalids from the Episcopal Hospital for Children on Mount Auburn attended the Centennial yesterday in the charge of Dr. Frank Caldwell. Some of the little sufferers were taken around in the wheel-chairs.”

Sept. 3, 1888 / Runaway Horse: “Elm Street, north of the Exposition Buildings, was the scene of an exciting runaway yesterday afternoon about three o’clock. The streets and sidewalks were crowded at the time by a host of people who had come out to witness the parade of the Catholic Knights. The runaway horse was attached to a buggy, in which were seated two women of the town — Mollie Shinkle and Stella Busch — inmates of Madame Wessel’s Charles-street house of ill-fame. Taking fright at some object on Elm Street, near Fifteenth, the horse wheeled and dashed southwardly at a frightful rate of speed. …Directly in front of the Exposition Buildings, the horse swerved from its course and went crashing against one of the iron columns supporting the arches of gas-jets that line the street. The shock was most terrific, and dozens of globes came down to be splintered on the street below.”

July 7, 1888 / Damn Good Democrat: “A curious incident happened yesterday at the Government State Department exhibit. A stranger approached Mr. Howe and said: ‘Young man, are you in charge of this exhibit?’ The answer was in the affirmative and the stranger continued: ‘I’m a d—n good Democrat and I don’t like the frame surrounding (President) Cleveland’s picture. If you’re willing, I’ll go out and buy the finest frame to be found in Cincinnati.’ The unknown departed, and, true to his word, returned in about two hours with a magnificent frame and a man, who changed the picture of the President from the old frame to the new one.”

Aug. 2, 1888 / Long Ride: “The Centennial was visited yesterday by Bennett Jones, a young man thirty-two years of age, who came all the way from Colorado, California on a bicycle. He left there on the 8th of June and departed on his wheel for his home, in Delaware, Ohio, last night. He averaged over forty miles a day on his trip.”

— COMPILED BY MORGAN ZUMBIEL AND MAIJA ZUMMO

Read the full issue here | Originally published July 4, 2018